Features

Reflecting on the past, while looking ahead to a promising future.

Humans have modified seeds and plants for thousands of years, each species responding and adapting to climatic and environmental changes. The changes were, for the most part, random and uncontrolled, resulting in adaptation of the species, sometimes with unintended results. Introduced in the late 90’s, current biotech seeds have been hand selected for traits, allowing plant and crop production to be controlled. With control, only the targeted, specific traits are produced for qualities benefitting producers and consumers.

Sugarbeet quality was reduced in 2016 because of Cercospora leafspot, excess nitrogen and extended warm fall.

Photo courtesy of Mohamed Khan.

Michigan Sugarbeet growers experienced the lowest sugar content since 1986. Multiple factors are involved when it comes to a sugarbeet plant producing and storing sugar. In fact research has found that maximizing beet quality (% Sugar) and recoverable sugar per acre (RWSA) involves more than a dozen controllable factors. To complicate matters, uncontrollable factors also cause beets to react to differing environmental situations each year. These will include: the amount of rainfall, temperature, length of growing season along with disease inoculum level. The interaction of all of these factors will result in varying degrees of impact on yield and quality.

By Mike Spieker​Beet sugar is used many products across the country every single day. One particular use that probably does not come to mind right away would be the adult beverage industry. Ben Brueshoff is trying to change that mindset, however, with his brand new vodka brand, BĒT Vodka. With the title carrying the phonetic reading of “beet”, this vodka proudly displays where its roots are from; sugarbeets. ​

SIDNEY, MT – An important two-year research project is underway at Montana State University's Eastern Ag Research Center in Sidney, Mont., comparing conventional till sugarbeet planting to no-till and strip-till planting methods.EARC researchers are also studying nitrogen management under these tillage practices.The study is being funded by a Western Sustainable Agriculture Research Education grant.

Monsanto Executive Vice President Headlines ISBI Speakers

The International Sugarbeet Institute (ISBI) show returns to the Fargodome in Fargo, N.D. on March 22-23 for the 55th running of the annual sugarbeet trade show. The 100,000 square foot exhibit floor of the Fargodome will be packed with nearly 120 companies featuring over $5 million of products and equipment on display. ​

The United States' Newest & Largest Single Sugar Transfer Facility!

It stands 130 feet tall, 185 feet in diameter, can hold 1.3-million-hundredweight of sugar and cost $44 million dollars to construct – it’s the brand new sugar dome built by American Crystal near Chicago and it’s open for business. ​

.... FROM THE 2017 ASGA MEETING

Arguably one of the most important topics at this year’s American Sugarbeet Growers Association meeting in Miami, Fla., was what the agriculture sector needed to strive for in the 2018 farm bill. The meeting opened with a Monday morning session that brought the upcoming farm bill to the forefront, titled “Looking Ahead to the 2018 Food Security Act.” The panel featured commodity leaders from several spectrums of agriculture, including corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, dairy and crop insurance.

Following Don Lilleboe's retirement at the end of the summer, Mike Spieker takes over as just the third editor of 'The Sugarbeet Grower' since 1963!

​Dear Readers,

For the last 31 years you have enjoyed reading the latest news and happenings in the sugarbeet world from one of the true greats of the industry; Don Lilleboe. Don not only carried on the storied tradition of ‘The Sugarbeet Grower’, but he brought the publication to new heights. On behalf of everyone at ‘The Sugarbeet Grower’ and the entire sugarbeet industry, we thank you Don for three decades of exceptional service to our profession and wish you a happy retirement.

Current legislative proposals to change U.S. sugar policy may be positioned as modest reform; but they would have dire economic consequences on U.S. sugar producers, put U.S. taxpayers on the hook — and leave U.S. consumers dependent on unreliable, subsidized foreign suppliers.

That’s the conclusion of a paper re-leased in mid-May by two Texas A&M University ag economists.

The paper, titled “Analysis of the Coalition for Sugar Reform Amendments to U.S. Sugar Policy: Potential Effect on Policy and Industry,” was pre-pared by Joe Outlaw and James Richardson for the American Sugar Alliance*. Outlaw is professor and extension economist at Texas A&M, while Richardson is regents professor and Texas Agricultural Experiment Station senior faculty fellow. The two economists also serve as co-directors of the university’s Agricultural and Food Pol-icy Center.

The sugarbeet curly top virus could meet its match in new sugarbeet varieties derived from KDH13, a germplasm breeding line developed by USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) researchers for resistance to the disease-causing pathogen.

Transmitted by small insects called beet leafhoppers, the curly top virus courses through the phloem of susceptible beet plants, wreaking cellular havoc that can manifest as yellow, inwardly curled leaves; stunted growth; and other telltale symptoms. Severe outbreaks of curly top disease can reduce sugarbeet yields by 30% or more.

Spraying insecticides can prevent leafhoppers from transmitting the virus to plants while feeding; but the preferred approach is to plant sugar-beet varieties that naturally resist the pathogen, notes Imad Eujayl, a molecular biologist with ARS’s Northwest Irrigation and Soils Research Lab at Kimberly, Idaho.